I’m looking to put together a powerpoint presentation for our summer camp this summer. I plan to put up a game field and demonstrate this years game and answer any questions about how to form a team and the basic jobs of each team member.
I’m looking for ideas and suggestions for a 45 minute class. What should I include? I won’t have enough time for everyone to drive the robot, most likely just a demonstration.
My main goal is to get more schools interested in Robotics. I would also like to use the presentation for next year when I start back up with a new class.
You could include a brief introduction to all the types of parts along with some building practices as well as mechanisms. Basic drivetrain building, etc. You could also include a little bit about how the coding works, that there are blocks as well as text and what not. (You could show them the code of the robot you’d demonstrate with too)
This year’s game challenge and maybe some footage from signature events/ event recap videos
Show off cool-looking robots you guys built
Basic team jobs (captain, builder, coder, driver, notebooker)
What happens at events (alliance selection, matches, skills, etc.)
Worlds recap videos from spin up
Right now it seems that you are jsut trying to get people interested, so just do the cool-looking and interesting stuff. Once they are hooked, then you can start teaching them about the platform and club orgnaization
Other than showing the introduction video for the current VRC season (this meeting was done in September 2023) and introducing some of the club executives, we spent the remainder of our time (35 minutes?) splitting up all of the attendees into three groups for them to rotate through the following stations which are also shown in the PDF:
Design: The current VRC game was introduced in more depth by introducing more specific game mechanics and discussing some of the strategies used in the past year’s competition. More experienced members also led discussions on potential design ideas for this year’s game based on many of the game mechanics, including sketching out ideas on a whiteboard, etc.
Programming: The group was split into two groups, one for those with more programming experience and one for people unfamiliar with programming. The beginner subgroup focused on understanding the V5 Blocks interface (ex., connecting the brain, running a program, and various sensors/motors), and, as far as I remember, we also tried VEXCode VR by introducing some of the challenges online for the members to try out. For the advanced group, we showed the C++ interface on VEXCode V5 Pro (now unsupported) or the Python interface on VEXCode V5, then showed our last year’s robot program to introduce some competition-specific material relevant to programming (e.g., pre-autonomous, autonomous, driver control) and may briefly mention inertial/gyro sensor usage and control algorithms.
Building: We first introduced the basic hardware components (e.g., motors, c-channels, bearing flats) as well as the tools that are used to build (screwdriver, wrench, drill, saw, etc.) before letting the members work on the disassembly of unused prototypes/competition robots from the past season to familiarize using the tools. After the basic building station, we used one of the competition robots from the past season in our ‘advanced’ building station to introduce various subsystems and components used in building a competition robot.
For 45 minutes, we spent most of the time familiarizing club members with the fundamentals of V5 instead of going into anything too deep (e.g., specific competition information). All of our meetings are student-led by a team of 5 executives, so going for an introductory meeting like this requires a few experienced students willing to teach the basics to newer students. After this first meeting, the next 2-3 meetings would look more in-depth into either programming or designing for our members under the guidance of club executives. Do let me know if you have any suggestions for me.
The meetings hosted by our club are attended mostly by members who are already willing to commit to robotics, so time should be taken away from introducing the technical aspects (that we’ve focused primarily on) and towards some of the team management aspects, such as team roles, forming a team, etc. I think that allowing your summer camp attendees to get hands-on would be very engaging and would probably allow for more interest, but this could be impractical given the context of the summer camp and, personally, I think that dividing into small groups can allow for more to be covered in a smaller amount of time, but only if there are people (for us, our club executives) to guide all of the groups in the various stations.
Thank you for the PowerPoint template. I started putting together a PowerPoint presentation as well. I can defiantly use this to go along with what I already have. I like how you suggested to break don into groups. The only issue I will have is I will be by myself at summer camp. I will have 45 minutes to put approximately 35 students through my presentation. Since I’m by myself what it be better to talk about each area separately vs three groups? I wanted to also talk about how to start up a team, the cost, and online certification courses for coaches. Are there any other details that I should focus on?
I think it might be easier to just talk about each area briefly instead of splitting up into three groups if you’re alone. The group format worked for me because we had many members that helped out during the meeting so I think that might not work the best for you.
I’m thinking I might just set up two or three different tables with talking points about each table.
Like maybe a parts table. Another table I might hook up a brain, battery and motor. Another table with a half built robot to have a couple people practice assembling and using tools.
Than conduct a game field demonstration. My main goal is to spark interest in Robotics. I plan to use the presentation next year at the beginning of school and set up some tables outside our cafeteria to recruit students into the Robotics program later this year.
Thank you for your input.
Any and all suggestions and comments are welcome!
If anyone else wants to add to this, please feel free to do so.
Hopefully by the time summer camp gets here I will have enough suggestions and material to run a successful Robotics station.